Review on ASUS VA249HE 1080P Monitor: Experience Crisp Visuals and Wide Viewing Angle on a 23.8" Touch Screen Display at 60Hz by Miguel Bernard

I received this in early February 2013. Built-in speakers are useless. To hear them in a normal room with little background noise, you have to get up and put your head on the monitor. NOT a very practical way to use the monitor. Please understand that I have been working in the electronics field for over 30 years. I know audio and I know PC. I was the owner of a service business for 10 years servicing all types of audio equipment from clock radios to high end audio equipment and I have also worked on my share. I have been building, restoring and maintaining PCs for 20 years. I installed it on a brand new Win 7 PC that I set up. I was new to PC, monitor and OS so I initially gave the benefit of the doubt and figured it must be a setting I couldn't find. I thought Asus is a great company and makes great products. I have used their motherboards many times and they are always reliable and well respected by others. I was too busy to figure out the problem right away and plugged in some old speakers while I didn't have time. When I finally decided it was the monitor, of course it was a day past the Revain return deadline. I contacted tech support through customer service and they were very nice but in the end insisted it was ok and said it only had 1 watt of sound. for two speakers. I replied that the cheapest clock radios have 1/2 to 1 watt sound and a speaker and make a lot more sound. They added that these speakers are not intended for general use. This has to be the dumbest comment I've ever heard from a tech support person, and I don't see anything in their specs or ads that say they don't rely on actual speaker usage. I finally gave up for a while and let her go. I then looked at why this is happening if it is normal as 1 watt should produce a reasonable sound level. My conclusion was BAD DESIGN. The speakers are tucked into the top of the case with very small, narrow slots for sound exit and point straight up. So if you position your head directly over the monitor, the audio is usable, if not loud, even at full volume. Armed with this understanding I figured they must have known it was a problem as all the devices are bad so I called support again. Substitute. From what I found it seemed useless but I figured it would at least show that I tried and I can confirm it was the design and maybe it'll get me something. Again very nice and I ran it through a program where I would return the one I had after getting a new one. The new one was actually exactly the same as the old one so I just sent it back. I called support and told them I wanted an exchange for another model that actually worked and offered to pay any difference in price. Again they offered good but useless help. They directed me where to place my request through their website. Apparently it was the electronic equivalent of a trash can. I received confirmation that they had received the request and nothing more was heard from them, although I checked in two or three times over the next three months. Audio isn't the only bad design of this product. The controls, including the power button, are on the bottom. This makes it difficult to find even a backlit on/off button. The other controls are VERY frustrating to use. They're completely hidden from any semi-normal viewing position, and you should be able to tell which control is what by the markings on the front. Unfortunately, the Revain image shows the labels much better than the actual product. If you look closely at this picture, you will understand how this happens. The bottom controls are visible, and this is only possible from a point just before and below the level of those control labels. From this angle they are more visible and in bright light to get a good picture they mask the problem. The labels are light silver on a black background and appear to lighten over time. Unless I shine a fairly bright light directly on the monitor surface, they are unreadable. So unless you plan to use it in a brightly lit lab or photo environment, be prepared to hold the flashlight in one hand and adjust settings with the other. The best thing I can say about this monitor is that the display works flawlessly. They seem to get it right and that's why I gave it 3 stars. I will never buy an Asus monitor again.